If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Announcement

Collapse

No announcement yet.

The Straight Onos: Early terror with a chance of doom, or walking joke?

The Straight Onos: Early terror with a chance of doom, or walking joke?

04-25-2007, 04:16 PM

I've seen a number of attempts to do a straight onos lately, so I thought I'd talk a little about when to try this, and how it can work. First, be aware that trying to fit a straight onos into a normal strat will fail most of the time. The most important time during most games is the second hive fight. If your team has a straight onos, this means that you're down a fade on this fight, making it much more difficult to get that hive up.

If your team is good enough to get that second hive up when they're effectively down a player, they'll probably be winning whether you go onos or spam ocs in the hive. This is what I call a "win more" plan. It can turn a game that you're already winning into a landslide, but it will not help in a game that's about even or a game in which you're behind. After the second hive has died, and it usually will, you're a 1 hive onos against a 2 hive lockdown. This is the walking joke scenario, your best bet is to get the marines laughing so much they forget to mow you down with their level 3 hmgs.

So, when can a straight onos be done well and have an effect on the outcome of the game? In short, when there isn't going to be a second hive fight before the onos comes up, or you're confident you can win that second hive fight. This can happen in a number of ways, so I'll go through them individually.

1. The other half of the "win more" scenario. You hit 50 res, and you can tell that your team is so far ahead the marines can't possibly do an effective second hive push. If marines have fewer than 4 nodes, no active pg, and your team has 4 nodes(counting hive node), a lerk and a fade, you can probably straight onos to cement the victory.

2. The alien team plans a strat suited to a straight onos (or possibly several). This is more likely to occur in a captains game, and will probably involve an rt hive rather than a straight hive, since an rt hive will be dropped around the time the onos hatches. The essence of this strat is to focus on keeping marine rts down while letting them walk into the second hive. Then, movement rush a hive with your shiny new onos (or oni), secure in the knowledge rines don't have the res flow for jps. On a side note, we need a new name for that, no movements are necessary...

3. Alternately, aliens have a strat where they'll be able to tell before the second hive is dropped whether marines will be able to attack it. For instance, a successful oc chokepoint strat is keeping the marines far away from that building hive, and it doesn't look like they'll be able to break through in time. This would be a good time to turn a straight fade into a straight onos.

The next three are counters to marine strats, and as such are responses to what the marine team has done, rather than something you plan from the start.

4. Marines get an early two hive lockdown, secure enough that you don't think a movement rush with a fade or two will work. Turn your hive into a straight onos and have one of your rt fades become an rt hive, and focus on marine res until you're ready to clear a hive.

5. Marines go early elec. One of the consequences of this strat is that marines will often be weaker during the second hive fight, hoping that the increased res flow will make up for being behind in tech. Your team can probably win the second hive fight without that extra fade, and having an onos clearing the map of elec'd rts could make that comm cry, so this is the time to try it if you've been looking for an opportunity.

6. Somehow, you can tell that marines are proto rushing, and know they'll be doing HA with it. Maybe a skulk runs into ms at 3:30 and sees an AA, and you know this comm hates jp. A proto rush is another strat that involves marines being behind on upgrades, and therefore probably allowing the second hive to go up, so this could be a time to go for that straight onos. It's a risky time to do it, since if it's a jp rush you'll be feeling a little silly. However, if you called it right and their big scary HA train runs into a straight onos, you should gain an easy win, and possibly a career as a fortune teller.

In any of these situations, it's obviously essential for the team to know that you're planning to straight onos, and what they need to do to help you pull it off. As the person deviating from a normal strat, it's up to you to get everyone doing what you need to make it work.

Feedback is of course welcome, either on one of the situations above, or on a situation I left out where a straight onos could come in handy. Just to be clear, I am not talking here about a normal rt onos. That fits perfectly well into a normal game, and does not in any way affect the second hive fight.